


Twice for Dad

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-30
Updated: 2006-05-30
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Trying to say what hurts the most is like picking the biggest grain of sand off of a beach; it's pointless, it can never be right. All they can say for sure is that he's gone and he's not coming back, and all that they can do is wish for something, anything, that they can do, because just now, there's nothing at all.





	Twice for Dad

Things get different once Dad is dead.

They wake up, just the two of them, at almost the same moment — eyes meeting again in the rearview mirror, suddenly weak from relief, or maybe that’s blood loss. But there’s only a split second of that, because then they’re looking straight at Dad, and the trouble is that he’s not looking back.

“Dad?” whispers Sam. “Dad?”

Dean struggles to free himself from his crushed metal prison. “Dad!” he yells, a bubble of blood popping between his lips in the middle of the word, so it’s more like some ridiculous secret language kids make up — "Dobad!”

It’s Sam who manages to free himself enough to inspect him. He holds his hand to the mouth, chest, mouth again, checking his vital signs again and again. Dean can see that his fingers are trembling.

“Well?” he demands, the urgency of knowing Dad’s alive overriding the pain that racks his body.

“I —” starts Sam. “Dean —” He turns his head, lets his hand drop. Beneath the blood, his face is stark white. He swallows with difficulty. “He’s gone.”

“No,” says Dean, hand clenching on the back of Sam’s seat. “No — he’s not. Dad — he can’t, he can’t be dead. Let me see him, you’ve just missed something —”

“Dean, he’s dead,” snaps Sam, his voice harsh despite the grief that swamps his face. “And pretty damn soon, we will be too.”

“No,” says Dean again, eyes fixed on Dad’s face, his world filling with that half-open mouth, those closed eyes, that graying stubble that shines a little with red. “No,” he gasps as the edges of his vision swirl dangerously, and one last time as blood forms a film across his mouth again, “Nobo!”

And then it’s all dizziness and he’s gone.

“Dean? Dean!” yells Sam, but there’s no response. He twists sharply in his seat, tries to reach his brother, but a sudden pain seems to split his chest in two, and he slumps against the seat, gasping at the pain that doesn’t recede.

Minutes pass. In a crushed ‘67 Impala somewhere off an abandoned road in the stark Midwest, Sam Winchester buries his bloody face in his bloody hands and cries.

\---

It’s little short of a miracle that nothing comes after them in those first few days at the hospital, when Dean’s in a coma and Sam’s too weak to get up — or perhaps it’s that the demon doesn’t want to hurt them just yet, perhaps their plight amuses it, maybe it wants to play with them a little more before dispatching them. In any case, as soon as they’ll let Sam get up and grudgingly listen to what he says, he makes them move him to a room with Dean and wards it with everything he knows, everything he can manage in a hospital like this. He stitches signs into Dean’s hospital clothes, sketches them on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the beds, the IV, his own skin, and invents excuses for it all that the nurses just barely accept. His obsession is beginning to border on insanity; the Devil’s Trap floats in his dreams and is usually the first thing he sees when he wakes, but it’s never enough, never enough, he can’t take a single risk.

When Dean wakes up, the first words out of his mouth are, “Holy fuck, man, what’ve you _done_ to this place?”

Sam laughs and cries and pulls him into a hug and Dean growls something about chick flick moments and it’s real, they’re brothers and they’re alive and they might just pull through all right.

But Dad is dead, and none of it’s quite the same.

\---

What hurts is going to the morgue and giving the authorities a false ID, saying Dad is Keith Howards or something like that, some innocent guy with nothing to do with demons or revenge or anything at all. Even now, John Winchester can’t be acknowledged, can’t be recognized for all he is and all that he’s done.

Of course it’s ridiculous to say that that’s what hurts, because what doesn’t?

Dean’s sullen and moody, and even after they’ve gotten away (far away) from that damned hospital and found a secluded little house somewhere or other and maybe started to recover, just a little, you can still see Dean’s tenuous grip on sanity splintering by the day. Sam’s grim and silent, overcome by a purpose he can’t fulfill, and maybe he’s not obsessively drawing the Devil’s Trap anymore, but it’s even worse that he can’t do anything at all. Their initial relief that each other are alive is long gone, replaced by some invisible wall that won’t let them look at each other at the same moment, won’t let them speak except in awkward, juddering half-conversation that means nothing or less. Dad is gone, and there’s nothing they can do — no one to “yessir” or yell at, no one to fight for or even against.

The worst part, really, might be that they both know they can’t solve a thing if they go on like this, and neither knows how to stop. Or maybe the worst part is thinking _Dad_ still means the yellow eyes and ugly grin of a demon, thrust into their father’s face, watching John Winchester try to destroy his two sons and laughing about it. Hell, maybe it’s even that they didn’t kill him themselves when they had the chance, that now Dad’s dead and the demon is gone and they’ve gotten nothing out of this, nothing. Maybe it’s that they could have given him that, at least — a necessary death, a death for the greater cause — and they didn’t.

They found the car, afterward, smashed into it with a crowbar and took whatever they could find, so they still have their weapons, including the Colt. Three bullets left. Sometimes Dean turns it over silently in his hands, sitting by the salt-lined window, and they both know what’s going through his head — one for the demon, one for each of them.

The trouble is the one that’s for the demon.

\---

One day, they’re sitting in silence at the table, and Sam clears his throat.

This isn’t a strange occurrence; Sam needs to clear his throat all the time now, seeing as the crash (the nurses used to call it the accident, but they’ll have none of that) crushed his lungs a little strangely and he’s always coughing up mucus. But this time, it isn’t his lungs. This time, he actually wants Dean’s attention.

“I had a dream last night,” says Sam.

Dean looks up, that’s something. In the old days, he would’ve done that thing with his eyebrows, like raising them but far more convoluted and expressive, but that can’t be expected now. Things are different now.

“Yeah?” says Dean, and that’s something more, something real, something big enough to give Sam the rush of courage he needs.

“The demon’s coming somewhere near here,” Sam says. “Soon.”

Dean’s silent for a moment, staring at his hands. “All right,” he says at last.

\---

They miss.

They barely get out with their lives.

\---

Somehow, there’s a job that needs them right then, and another after that, and now they’re in the business again, although they can’t quite figure out why.

But it’s different. They don’t make a seamless team anymore. They have to work at it — work to communicate, work to survive.

It’s been a couple months when Sam collapses at the wheel of their car — it’s a new one, out of a used car place, not anywhere near so good as the Impala, but she serves. Dean seizes her wheel and steers them safely to the roadside, jerking the emergency brake, before he leans down to shake his twitching, sweating brother.

It takes a couple moments for Sam to return to this world. When he does, he gasps Dean’s name in the same exact tone as he did in another car, out by another roadside, that Dean doesn’t particularly care to remember. “What happened?” he asks instead, eyebrows locking together in concern (and at least they’re doing something now, because those eyebrows, they speak for Dean, and when they aren’t speaking then something’s wrong).

“Vision.” Of course. Sam sits up, still trembling a little. “It’s coming. For us, this time. Back at the little house we stayed.”

“Demon?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re screwed.”

“But,” says Sam, “but — I think I might understand. Maybe. How to kill it.”

“I thought — the Colt.”

“We’ll always miss. It’s too fast.”

“So, then, what?”

“Well — I’ve got my telekinesis thing, right?”

“You think you just throw that thing around and kill it?”

“No, not like that. I can hold it down for you and the Colt, though.”

“Great idea,” says Dean. “Great. Only, newsflash: you can’t _use_ your telekinesis.”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “I know.”

\---

Back home, or as much home as this little three-room place can be, Sam starts to practice.

To put it in Sam language, his powers need work.

To put it in Dean language, they’re still most definitely screwed.

Not that Dean thinks much of this in any case. It’s a stupid idea on Sam’s part — who does he think he is, to try and pin a demon down with something like telekinesis? — and he doesn’t think much of Sam’s explanation that since his powers are mental, too, they just might work on the thing’s dual nature. Dean doesn’t mind voicing his opinion.

By nightfall, they’re fighting, their first fight since Dad’s been gone. They raise their voices and kind of hate each other and at this point they _care_ , they care so much it hurts and their throats are raw from yelling and it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. It stops being just about Sam and his ridiculous notions and starts being about anything, everything — they jump to Dad’s death and how much everything is or isn’t ruined by it and within a few minutes they’ve found their way to all the old arguments that don’t even matter these days, the ones that haven’t mattered in forever, and it feels so good to air them out again. After a while, it just dissolves into a fistfight and that, too, is better than anything there’s been over the past few months. Sam’s right hook, Dean’s block and kick in retaliation, and that’s all it takes to get Sam that bit off-balance that makes it so when Dean tackles him they both go tumbling inelegantly to the floor.

Maybe it’s different, or maybe it’s just been so long, but it’s a little surprising for a moment, how well their two bodies fit together. There’s Dean’s knee between Sam’s legs, lifting him that little bit so he’s not pressed into his brother’s crotch (which would of course be vaguely awkward, even if they are brothers), his other leg flat along the floor alongside Sam’s — the way their chests press together, Dean’s just a little higher than Sam’s because Sam is all legs and not quite so much torso and Dean’s just the opposite — how Sam’s left arm, stretched out, pins Dean’s right beneath it at the wrist—and then the way their other arms prop them up, Sam’s hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean’s flat on the floor. It interlocks, all of it, that little bit like gears that slide into place after having grated against each other the wrong way for so long.

And for some reason, they’re no longer fighting — they’re laughing instead, loud and hysterical, Sam’s head arched back and Dean’s ducked down, and in a moment or two, for some reason, their mouths are together and yes, that’s definitely what you’d call kissing, although they’ll argue for however long they live over which of them started it, never agreeing with each other and usually not agreeing with whatever it was they themselves said just the other day. Right now, though, it doesn’t seem to matter quite so much.

That’s when the lesser-known of the Winchester family curses comes into play. They have, of course, yet to make intimate acquaintance with the bookshelf here, and as Winchesters _always_ get to know their bookcases, this is the moment to do it — or so the bookshelf seems to have decided.

“This is going to hurt,” states Dean in the split second before it does, only it doesn’t, which is more than a little confusing until he follows Sam’s wide eyes up to the romance-novel-filled monstrosity (hey, previous owners, dude), frozen at a forty-five degree angle from the wall.

“Telekinesis works, then,” remarks Dean, raising his eyebrows. 

On its way back into place, the bookcase lets one gaudy volume slip, and it hits Dean squarely on the head.

Sam smirks.

\---

Waiting restlessly in his seat for the time to come, Dean turns the gun over in his hands one last time, pondering what this is they mean to do. Sam’s explained quite thoroughly, and several times — the demon’s too quick for them, it needs to be anchored to a human for them to be able to do a thing. That’s why they could’ve killed it back when it had Dad, because it was anchored then. Only this time, it’ll be firmly fastened to Sam without actually being inside of him, so the thing won’t kill him when it dies. 

It had better not.

The two of them are seated on simple wooden chairs in the main room. The door is wide open and the salt line has been swept away. They’re making it easy, obvious, but the demon will take it, because he thinks them an unworthy challenge.

He, the Colt, and Psychic Boy here are going to show that thing what they are made of.

\---

Holding the thing is nearly killing Sam; he’s rocking back and forth in his chair, biting down hard on his lower lip. He’s sprung a sudden nosebleed and he’s gasping for breath. In the air before them, the demon twists and writhes.

No time to waste. Dean cocks the gun, aims, thinks for a split second of the two remaining bullets — one for him, one for Sammy.

He pulls the trigger, then again — once for him, once for Sam, twice for Dad, and it’s done.


End file.
